Archive for March, 2011

Mattel’s Happy Holiday Dolls will not come with doll stands like it used to, as its research shows most people dont take the dolls out of the box, so mattel presumed that a doll stand woulnt be necessory…

A plastic doll stand like mattel’s doesnt even cost 15¢ to make in China

Mattel’s researchers should have asked customers questions like this:would you rather not have a doll stand or would rather pay extra 50¢ to have a doll stand?

if Mattel didnt have to waste money doing these silly ressearches or fight Bratz, each Barbie Doll would have a better doll stand without adding any cost.

besides, there are many better ways to save the cost, for example, make the package smaller & lighter, it saves a great deal both on internation & domastic shipping.

the recent silkstone dolls come with large boxes, but the doll size remains the same, there is absolutely no extra accessaories that require larger box, as a mattel of fact, these dolls have less and less assessories. Mad men, Russian Dolls… the packages size has increased by 33%. the postage? shipping a regular Silkstone doll from NY to CA via priority is around $8.12, but for larger boxes like they use now? it’s $12.14. Mattel will add the cost to Dealers, Dealers will add these extra cost to buyers, it doesnt help mattel to increase sales, doesnt it?

when it comes to international shipping, I am sure Mattel ships FCL (full-container-load), A 20′ container may can loload 7,800 pcs regular silkstone dolls, but only 5,200 silkstone with larger box. how much cost has been added to the doll?

these holiday dolls? if they downsize the bulky package by 33%, the money they saved on each unit would be enough to make 1 dozen doll stand.

This doll has been partially repainted, I did NOT do it, so I dont wanna take “credit” for it. but I rerooted & restyled her hair. her owner asked for a French Twist, but I gave her a BeeHive instead –she has way too much thick hair, there is no way I could sizedown, so the “Twist” is BIG, Gee! actully, I could still do a French Twst, if I cut her hair shorter than 1″, but I was afraid of doing so, as it would leave no room for hair restyling in the future.

Like this:

this doll is supposed to complete the “Fund Raising Plan” for my travel to 2011 Barbie covention, but I was in great ” buying mood” last Friday, and I won 5 silkstone dolls from eBay auctions. but I am not super worried, all the dolls are for future OOAK projects, they wont ruin my plan but only make it better. I just need to work a little bit harder.

Like this:

I received another Debut doll from a Barbie collector, who requested me to reroot & restyle the doll hair … How many debut dolls I have rerooted? I really dont know.

when I lost count how many debut dolls I have rerooted, I got an idea that I’d keep their original ponytails as my Trophies… see how many I have had now? lol..

well, these “Trophies” will eventually go to Trash can if I am certain there wont be more debut on the way…

I sure helped Mattel with Debut sales… some collectors bought many extras so I could create OOAK for them.

here are some of the Debuts I have worked on, I wish I had taken photos of all the dolls I worked on, but sometimes I got lazy so I just let go of it without taking any photos. the good news is, more photos will be added to this album soon!

I like the face & hair color of the “Teenage Fashion Model” Barbie, maybe I’ll get one from eBay someday, but I have no love for “my favorite Ken”, so he will not come home. here is their final chance being together before I break them up:

Like this:

If you have a limited selling history—90 days or less from your first sale, 25 or fewer sales transactions or $250 or less total sales since your first sale—or if you have a Below Standard rating in your Seller Dashboard, your buyer’s payment will first show as pending in your PayPal account. Funds will be available 3 days after eBay receives confirmation of delivery when you upload tracking information, or 7 days after your latest estimated delivery date if you don’t upload tracking but mark the item as shipped. If no shipping information is provided to eBay—you don’t upload tracking information or mark the item as shipped—funds will be available 21 days after the buyer pays.

holding your buyers payment up for 21 days? ebay just wants to use your fund without paying you interests. eBay loves to abuse sellers, as if sellers are not its customers but its enemies, I wish eBay remebers the failure it had in China, latecomer TaoBao.com kicked ebay out of China & gave eBay no chance to return!

…. Taobao was a relative latecomer to the market – founded by Alibaba in 2003 – yet succeeded in rapidly taking on, and humiliating, eBay in this market by adopting a ‘free of charge’ strategy to compete with eBay’s listing fee model. How then to make money?

The answer is advertising. Taobao’s traffic makes it (according to Alexa.com) already the 5th largest website in China behind Baidu, QQ (Tencent), Sina and Google’s Chinese site. Over 80% of Taobao’s c. USD 300 million estimated 2009 revenues came from advertising, mostly ‘pay for performance’ ads as well as ‘pay for transaction’ and brand advertisements. The remaining 20% of revenues were generated between commissions that Taobao charges on its new (launched in 2008) Taobao Mall – a B2C area within its C2C platform – and value added services for merchants. Of course not (yet) charging transaction fees means that the “take rate” of Alibaba – the revenue generated for the company vs. the GMV – is only c. 1% vs 7.9% in the case of eBay, but this also explains the rapid increases in the GMV and the barriers for other contenders to take on Taobao.

see how smart TaoBao is? eBay is only good at abusing sellers & protecting buyers who are scammers like infamous Rimma Likover!

one of the brightest hollywood stars died yesterday, some people believe its time to cash in their Elizabeth Taylor dolls.

I purchased my “White Diamond” Elizabeth Taylor doll at $19 last year… but I found this morning her list price on ebay is as high as $10,000.

Okay, This auction sure gets some “publicities” here on my blog site, but do you really believe it will cash in a single penny? would it have better chances if the seller said “auctioning to raise money for a brain cancer patient who has no insurance but needs surgery ASAP…”

I am not sure what is happening, maybe the new silkstone dolls are boring but pricy, so people go back to look for the older ones?

since ebay will offer every seller 50 free auction listings each month after April 15th, I predict many auctions will start at high prices since sellers wont have to pay insertion fees based on the items’ start prices. bad news for buyers.

It took me long time to warm up with silkstone dolls, I didnt start collecting them after July, 2009. I was luck to find many good deals on ebay, there are still lots highly-sought-after silkstone dolls I dont have, I guess the chances to find them at reasonable prices in the future are slim since their prices keep going up every day.

the milk price has also gone up a lot lately… so we cant complain about the doll prices. I only wish Mattel could come up with some great designs in the future so people can look forward and dont have to stalk the old ones on eBay.